Best Plugins for Magazine Site

Hi all, Im new to WordPress, but I’ve scoured these boards and the internet looking for the best plugins for WordPress to be used as a magazine.

Ive actually gotten a headache over the last week looking at all the different plugins.

So, id like some opinions on the best plugins that will do the following…if you all don’t mind.

1. Related articles. Would give a list several related articles tot eh one being read.

2. Ad Banner rotator that lets me add ad blocks to the side bar as well as within a post (is ad rotator the best one?)

3. I want to use custom news feeds that ive specified through Yahoo newsfeeds to show up as a list in a sidebar. Should be able to specify how many are visible and able to view an archive. example, a newsfeed that specifies air safety, a list of headlines taht link to the source article…or if possible, to a page on my site that shows the news.

4. Categories that list a specified number of posts. It should allow me put the categories in teh main portion of the main page with the list under each.

5. And, is there a navigation plug in that i can put pages in a horizontal menu between the header and the body with subpages?

6. Any plug in taht would be essential in building a magazine or newspaper..the best of the best…

7. OH, and a plug in that will allow the first post of each SPECIFIED category on the main page. I could choose the category that should be on the front page, and the first post of those category shows up as part of my front page content.

I know this is alot, and i’ll keep looking but Ive installed so many, im getting confused with what is best and best overall use…best options, etc.

Thank you everyone, in advance.
Mark

I know this is alot, but i think if those plugins were available and listed, then others with the same idea of a newspaper/mag would definitely benefit.

2.(is ad rotator the best one?) – Not sure if it’s the best but it works, it would be a great plugin for more development tho… something everyone could use!

4. Categories that list a specified number of posts = CQS Custom Query Search, i think is the plugin. “It should allow me put the categories in teh main portion of the main page with the list under each.” – It doesn’t do that, you could code that with Multiple Loops on your index.php without a plugin tho.

5. a horizontal menu between the header and the body with subpages? — This is basically something you can code using CSS. Not sure of a plugin

6. Any plug in taht would be essential in building a magazine or newspaper.. — Google Sitemaps, I’m a fan of Image Headlines from coldforged, WP-Print from Gamerz

7. OH, and a plug in that will allow the first post of each SPECIFIED category on the main page — It would be a neat plugin but otherwise you can code this using Multiple Loops (instructions in the Codex).

Thank you both. Seems Multiple loops will need to be learned on this end. Ha….and yes, would be a great plug in. I really love WordPress…Im somewhat suprised with all the development that there is no one full theme builder and plugin editor to place plugin’s in certain portions of pages etc. But since im not a php programmer, a few dozen people would love to slap me right now..I know the feeling of “All you gotta do is…” from someone who doesnt do it themselves.

Astereo, I looked over the site link and its very good. I downloaded the training template and will get to work in it tomorrow…i appreciate the help and any plugins you or anyone can suggest would be appreciated.

“Widgits” which is a plugin itself, is the new method of “placing plugins where you want” on the page, but so far it’s mainly designed for using in your Sidebar. I think technically Widgits could be used in your main page content too, but that’s more tricky.

Unfortunately if you want to design a large scale Magazine type of website, you need to know CSS, and learn at least some familiarity with Multiple Loops (which is PHP… although you don’t really have to learn PHP because you can pretty-much copy and modify code from the Codex).

The PHP stuff is used to pull the info you want from the database, the CSS is used to position it on the page where you want it to appear and in the fonts/styles you want

I hacked WordPress to fit a large scale Magazine site that would allow Subscribers to the print version of the mag log in and change their mailing information as well as update some profile data for the interest of advertisers. Then there are other hacks to do everything from creating a Subheadline field in the Write Post form and a corresponding column in the wp-posts table, to a form for adding a cover image to each category, which was renamed Issue (and Post was renamed Article). There’s a lot of details to port WP into a magazine CMS but anything’s possible. Although custom development I found to be the only answer.

if doing each Issue as 1 Category — you could also categorize by topic, For example “CD Reviews” that would be all the reviews regardless what Issue. each Author is also automatically an archive in WP default theme, but I found that field is best used for the Post person, not necessarily the writer. Thinking of using a custom field for the writer, or just putting a by-line in the Body of the post (article).

Ahh, custom dev. 1 step at a time

right now I’m trying to learn how to display a list of headlines sorted by a Custom Field… i.e. all the posts with the Custom Field key “writer” and value “Dgold” >> I bet geoff could pull this off 🙂

Although I find it simpler to create a new user account for every author. Then you can attach an image and profile information to the user, and that author/contributor can log in and edit the information, update the photo, edit the story, etc.